To Drysdale, Dodgers Meant Winning : Reaction: Former teammates remember the man who believed in tradition.

In August of 1969, Don Drysdale called an impromptu team meeting. He was not leaving before throwing one last inside fastball.

He gathered his Dodger teammates, appropriately, in the food room next to the Dodger Stadium home clubhouse.

It is a room with concrete floors and no windows, a place where you eat in your underwear. Drysdale’s kind of room.

First, he announced his retirement.

Then he vowed that, while his right arm would be leaving, his legacy would remain.

“He said that the Dodgers’ name across the front of the jersey means a lot more than just letters,” pitcher Claude Osteen recalled. “He talked about pride. He talked about keeping alive a tradition.”

In that room were two hotshot 21-year-old infielders--Bill Russell and Steve Garvey.

They listened. Several years later, 1974, thanks to Russell, Garvey and several others who were in that room on that day in 1969, the Dodgers returned to the World Series and that championship tradition lived again.

“Right to the end, this is what Don Drysdale believed,” said Ron Fairly, another former teammate who also became a broadcaster. “That the ‘Dodgers’ across your shirt means winners.”

At the end, this was perhaps his biggest contribution to the organization. He never let anyone forget what it was like to be a Dodger.

“Don represented the Dodgers more than anybody who has ever worn the uniform,” said Ron Cey, moments after learning of Drysdale’s death Saturday at age 56.

In his final years, Drysdale wore casual clothes to the games, he sat behind a microphone, and he had not dusted off a batter in 24 years.

But his presence, and his words, were constant reminders of times when players played from the heart, not the back pocket.

“I used to love it when he would talk baseball with me,” said Mickey Hatcher, one of the few modern players who truly listened. “He would talk about how they used to do it, how they used to feel, how they used to have fire .”

Hatcher, speaking from a Detroit hotel room late Saturday after coaching first base for the Texas Rangers, paused to collect his composure.

“Don would talk about how you weren’t supposed to love the other team, you were supposed to hate them,” he said. “You know, there was a lot to what he said.”

And he said it a lot. As a broadcaster, he was not afraid to criticize mental mistakes, or question the insides of a pitcher who has obviously asked to be removed from the game.

“Good golly, today we always use statistics like, ‘This guy has had 19 quality starts in his last 28 starts,’ ” Fairly said. “Drysdale has quality starts for 11 or 12 years .”

After witnessing several consecutive walks, for example, Drysdale was known to simply say, “I can’t believe I’m seeing this in the major leagues.”

He would also talk in the press box during breaks, and with players after games. He would talk about one at-bat, one pitch, one swing.

Last season’s Dodger disaster perhaps hurt nobody worse than Drysdale, who, late in the season, dropped his off-air voice to a whisper. “What is the world is going on here?” he said to a reporter one night in a near-empty press box before a game in the Houston Astrodome. “My goodness, what would Walter O’Malley say if he saw this? What happened to our tradition?”

Memories of Drysdale were being replayed throughout the baseball world Saturday night, even in places such as Seattle, where announcer and close friend Dave Niehaus suddenly broke into a Mariners’ broadcast with a flashback.

“I saw Scott Fletcher digging in at home plate for the Red Sox and suddenly I said, ‘You know what Don Drysdale would be saying right now if he was pitching,” Niehaus said. “He would be saying, ‘Fine. You’re digging yourself right out of this game.’ ”